Anthony Fauci, a top US scientist, has demanded China share the medical records of nine patients who contracted a coronavirus-like sickness prior to the outbreak, claiming that they could reveal whether the pandemic originated in a lab.
Reports that six miners were ill in 2012 and three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became ill in 2019 after visiting a bat cave in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan have fanned the “lab leak” notion.
The data could address important concerns about the contentious origins of Covid-19 in Wuhan, where a pandemic that has killed over 3.6 million people globally began, according to US President Joe Biden's main medical advisor in an interview with The Financial Times on Thursday.
“I'd want to review the medical records of the three people who are believed to have become ill in 2019,” Fauci stated. “Did they truly get sick, and if so, what kind of illness did they have?”
“It's the same with the miners who got sick a long time ago... “What do those people's medical documents say?” he inquired.
“It's entirely possible that the roots of Sars-Cov-2 were in that cave, and that it propagated organically or through the lab.”
Fauci has previously stated that he believes Covid-19 is a natural occurrence, though he admits that he isn't "100%" sure.
China has flatly denied the lab leak idea, accusing the US of selling conspiracies and politicizing the outbreak in order to deflect attention away from the country's high death rates. There is also a scarcity of evidence to back up the hypothesis.
The natural genesis argument, which was backed up by a WHO expert team who visited China last year, maintains that the virus first appeared in bats and then spread to humans via an intermediary species.
Beijing's foreign ministry dismissed Fauci's assertions on Friday, citing the findings of that visit, as well as unproven assertions that the virus first arose at a US biological research center at Fort Detrick.
When asked if Beijing would provide the medical records, it referred to a statement from the Wuhan Institute of Virology from March.
“We hope that individuals who do not believe in conspiracy theories, who respect the facts, and who appreciate the truth will be able to gain factual answers from this statement,” Wang Wenbin, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said during a press conference.
Scientists have yet to uncover a virus in bats or another animal that matches the genetic signature of SARS-CoV-2, despite this being a widely accepted idea at the outset of the outbreak.
Last Monday, Biden directed US intelligence services to report to him within three months on whether the Covid-19 virus first appeared in China from an animal source or as a result of a laboratory error.
